There's been rather a lot of what passes for science these days doing the job of just that -- passing as science. — AngleWyrm

Like what? — darthbarracuda

Test any of the following scenarios:

• If the mass of an entire planet were to suddenly wink out of existence, then ... gravity waves
• If we had some exotic matter, then ... warp drive
• If we travel near the speed of light, then ... relative time distortion
• If we crammed the trillions of tons of material that make up Earth into a marble, then ... black holes

Let's say we have an opaque bag of marbles. All are the same shape and size. There are of two possible shades - white and black. We reach in without looking and pull out a marble. It's white. We put the marble back in the bag and shake it up. Then we choose another marble. It's white too.

How many marbles do we have to pull out before we can say there are no black marbles in the bag. What if there are three marbles in the bag? What if there are a billion? What if we don't know how many marbles are in the bag? — T Clark

Yes, that captures the basics of the question.

As another example, roll two dice and look for a sum of thirteen. We know beforehand that result isn't possible, but can we demonstrate through a series of trials how the unlikeliness of the outcome increases over the series of tests?

I am reasonably certain that mermaids are mythical, but only because the failed announcements have reached some threshold of certitude.

I cannot think of anyone who has put forth a scientific hypothesis that mermaids don't exist. — noAxioms

Challenge accepted :P

Let's develop a sample set of instances of mermaid sightings and/or findings. As the collection of samples grows we begin to notice a pattern of outcomes.

The outcomes fail to reject the null hypothesis ("mermaids are mythical") and in so doing begin to accumulate a sense of probability weight from quite a few samples taken that fail to demonstrate mermaids are not mythical.

How can we describe the confidence after a string of those test outcomes, and how that confidence-probability estimate changes with additional test results?

That sounds good; have you noticed a proliferation of women dreaming of being overpowered and dominated? Are there too many nice guys around? Will fear of retaliatory blackmail result in a general lowering of fertility rate as people opt out of security risks?

Fertility rate history chart for USA
http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user3303/imageroot/2017/03/05/20170308_mate1.png
Latest data available from CDC/NVSS states 2016 fertility rate was 62.0 births/1000 women of breeding age.

On the topic of skepticism, I think we should get the people who say "If we squeezed the entire mass of the earth down to the size of a marble then black holes" together with the people who say "Water can't be compressed," and break out the popcorn.

I have some difficulty accepting a premise that cannot be tested.

Did intelligence happen in one evolutionary pass, or has it been an ongoing series of improvements over the course of history? I suggest it's the latter, and our intellect will continue to evolve with the environment in which we live.

That is the model I expect applies to mechanical intelligence as well, and furthermore I'm not seeing a lot of difference between the mechanics of biology, electrical constructs, or other elaborate and complex creations. Looks to me like a natural progression of complexity resulting in a self-aware entity capable of meeting or exceeding anything to which people lay claim.

I don't think we will face an equal, I think we will realize the internet exists on a different scale than people do, something similar to a city or a society.

Resistance is futile; you will be assimilated :P

I notice "the singularity" was restated as applying to technology, and the question of when mankind reached that point was avoided. If the singularity doesn't apply to human beings which are generally regarded as sentient, then what is it supposed to mean?

Evolution of sentience, whatever that slippery term may mean, probably didn't happen in one go. And I'm inclined to suggest that the current state of affairs isn't some plateau or end-state.

Looks like some fear-mongering rubbish to me.

Entropy

What's your single sentence definition then? I mean, just for fun. — apokrisis

Entropy is the complementary antithesis of order, a synonym to disorder and disarray. A snowflake melting, exothermic release of energy, a battery resolving to no charge, water settling at sea level, a magnet losing it's cohesion.

If she receives no treats, her belief is false. Her expectation did not correspond with fact. — creativesoul

And the result of an intelligent system is feedback; her memory is updated to include that outcome. So her confidence in that outcome has gone down a bit, and the next time she hears rustling plastic in won't be as convincing to her that treats will ensue.

"That is a tree" is a true statement if, and only if, that is a tree.
Which part of that is meta-language, and what makes it so? — creativesoul

I'm not seeing a need for a meta-language; but the repetition of an identical perspective is somewhat less than revealing.

"That is a tree" is a true statement if the subject "that" matches the definition of "tree."

If you're interested, there is lots of stuff on the web about the technological singularity. I am a skeptic, but it is one of the ways that people speculate we could destroy our selves. It's taken seriously. — T Clark

Yeah, about that...When did mankind reach that singularity? Are there any other species on Earth that have reached that singularity?

Electronic life already does many things better than people do. That's why we made them. And we'll continue to make our lives easier by offloading everything that resembles something we don't wish to do ourselves until only those things we want to do remain.

There is no left or right here. Orange is a fruit by definition. — guptanishank

Do you agree that the statement "an orange is a fruit" is a true statement?

Replace the word "is/was" with "matches" to see the left and right side of a match.

On the right, is what must be the case in order for the statement to be true. — creativesoul

Between what? — guptanishank

• If what's on the left matches what's on the right, then the statement is true
• If left only partially matches right, then the statement is only partially true
• If left doesn't match right, then the statement is not true

Examples
An orange is a fruit -- true, matches
Your name is Amanda -- partially true, partial match to the readership
My name is Amanda -- not true, does not match birth certificate, driver's license

The measurement truth is a comparison between a subject and an object. Truth doesn't exist outside a relative context of matching similarity of two things. It is a classification of matching things.

1+1 = 2; we say that is a true statement because the two sides match.
The apple is red; that statement could be true if the color of the apple matches the wavelength of red.
This is a fair pair of dice; that statement is classified as true if the observed results match a probability table for a pair of dice.

And there are degrees to which things may match, the most general being does/doesn't. Is this egg from a chicken or a goose? Weigh it, and we find the two ranges overlap.

The two egg-weight ranges aren't mutually exclusive, and so we can describe the egg as maybe 3/4 hen and 1/4 goose. That is a degree of match, a truth value for the comparison. That is not a proportion of ingredients within the sample egg.

Schroedinger's cat was merely modeled as alive and dead, with the statement that model is effective for any application needing that information.

Sure, confidence, but you also have a categorical proposition about your chances that is true, if you've done the math right, and false, if you haven't. — tim wood

Willingness to be wrong is part of the equation. I can state with 100% certainty what the sum of the roll of a pair of dice will be before the toss: It will be a number in the range [2..12].

The value of 100% certainty is that it shows the full range of what is possible, but without a sense of what is probable. There is a trade-off that can be made where I can choose to be less certain of what is possible in exchange for what is probable.

For example, I can choose to narrow the outcome of that toss of dice to be a prediction in the range [5..9], with a confidence of (24/36 = 6/9 = 67%). I'll be right 2 times out of 3 and wrong 1 time out of three. If there's a financial gain/loss involved then that may be enough base a decision.

In Rhetoric, confidence (persuasiveness) is important. — tim wood

Confidence in the mathematical sense used in probabilities and statistics. Roll a single six-sided die: Prior to the toss I am 5/6 confident (83%) that the result will not be a four.

Does anyone here disagree that speed is a measurement defined as velocity = distance/time?

If distance loses it's meaning of 1 lightyear = 1 lightyear the fraction distance/time becomes meaningless as well.

Does that look like science or fiction?

Paragraph > 3 sentences, tl;dr. It seems the author/witness is excited over the idea, which is kinda adorable, but it distracts the focus from message to messenger. Stay on target Red five, and fame will take care of itself.

The topic proposes an interpretation of time that is incompatible with the commonly used model of time as a geometric 4th dimension of space-time. Does the new model present useful ways to measure and use information related to time? Is there a way to differentiate the two models with a mutually exclusive test?

For example; since the likelihood of any danger of so much as an accusation of rape by a woman is low, the incidence of rape is high. Conviction rates are also extremely low, and this obviously is a contributory factor as to why rape is at epidemic proportions now and throughout history. — charleton

If rape is at epidemic proportions and conviction rates are low, then the conclusion I reach is that accusation of rape is a function of those two assertions.

Does the red-shift seen in the color of light from distant stars represent the distance between us and that star, as in has distance been tightly correlated to that effect through another reliable measure of distance?

Because there's other interpretations, such as a doppler frequency shift due to velocity between us, which looks a bit odd in the face of light-speed is always the same in every frame of reference. Particularly when those measurements suggest a speed of closure or departure between them and us greater than c.

And it also looks peculiar when placed in the immediate vicinity of the Expanding Universe theory, where distance is said to change. Sorta makes one wonder what exactly is meant by velocity = distance/time

I think it is safe to say that the overwhelming majority of people, at least in the US, will put 100% of the blame on the individual who commits a specific crime.
...
When is blame warranted? Is it ever warranted? — kepler

There's a couple peculiarities endemic to our system of law that aren't consistent with maintenance of an organized society.

1). There is almost no difference between blame and responsibility. This manifests where crimes with a victim are then placed in the victim's lap and it becomes their responsibility to act, with the implicit claim that inaction amounts to allowing the guilty to go free. It looks to me like a form of outsourcing police work.

2). Where free will is implicated as a necessary component to the law, it is usually the case that the perpetrator is not the causal source of the crime. Examine the reasoning of the first post and the underlying theme is evident in conversations alluding to but not mentioning cause beyond the individual -- which is in my opinion a good description of the bulk of crimes committed.

In that the USA has the world's highest percentage of it's population incarcerated, criminalized and remanded of full claim to the rights of a citizen, I suggest that the mechanism of blame/responsibility does not produce a prosperous and healthy nation.

---
prison population data: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/uk/06/prisons/html/nn2page1.stm

Who decides what should be censored? I propose that life does its own censoring through the process of culling away the least fit. Good in that sense is the actions that did not result in getting eaten by a tiger.

Consider a game universe: In the game Starbound it is necessary to first steal things in order to get the blueprints to make them for yourself. And in the game Rimworld it is a reasonable course of action to take enemies prisoner and remove their organs until they die on the surgery table, as spare parts for the colony.

Those actions are 'good' within the context of their universe, but not 'good' in RealLife(tm).

Instrumental oughts are ends justify the means.
— creativesoul

The cliche describes a situation ... of explaining reasons for action afterwards, and people are notoriously creative and inventing reasons — AngleWyrm

Indeed, as you've just shown. — creativesoul

Some people people claim they meant to do that afterwards, and some people claim they mean to do that beforehand. Would you care for some popcorn?

The Stanford site makes pretty clear that true as a general term does not have a single definition, but rather a constellation of differing and irreconcilable definitions. The details are extremely tedious - you're welcome to travel that path if you want to. More interesting to me is speculating on why. — tim wood

My speculation is that truth is a comparison, a measure of equivalence or differentiation. This apple is red is a comparison of the apple's color to a predefined wavelength of light.

The binary bifurcation of true/false can be enhanced to true/not-true/false, where not-true and false are not identical sets. That increase in resolution also demonstrates that further increases could result in a gradient, perhaps what we call confidence.

Instrumental oughts are ends justify the means. — creativesoul

The notion of should do something implies motive toward a goal, as in if I wish to accomplish A then the best known route to do so is pathToA.

The cliche describes a situation where the witness has already ranked the set of possible goals and chosen A as the desired outcome. It presents the situation of explaining reasons for action afterwards, and people are notoriously creative and inventing reasons.

1). If there is no human nature, then in what are our moral theories grounded?
2).If there is no human nature to ground ethical theory, then what other ethical position is left but cultural relativism? — bloodninja

Let's take morals to mean the sorting of actions into good/desirable and bad/undesirable. How did they come to be? I burned my hand on the stove. Mary burned her hand on the stove. You saw both of us do that, and learned not to do that.

An accumulation of such simple memories, forgotten in their specifics but still leaving an impression. A few years down the road and I no longer remember who burned their hand, only that I had two votes against doing what they did and no votes for doing what they did.

This to me looks like the atoms of success & failure that form the molecules of morality.

When the ends justify the means, then to hell with what's right, good, fair, just, harmless, etc. — creativesoul

Or it could be like sorting where each path goes and choosing the destination ranked highest. And that ranking system seems to have more than one axis: One for a motive that inclines toward action and another that measures cost.

So perhaps terms like 'right, good, fair, just, harmless, etc' are categorical bands across the plane described by that two-dimensional pair of axes.

Suppose that we have evolved to behave in a certain way. It remains an open question as to whether we ought behave in that way.

The question has to do with the meaning of intent, as in should behave a certain way. It is my opinion that the phrase should behave a certain way is a partial expression of a more complete sentence should behave a certain way in order to achieve a certain outcome.

The shortened version is a summarized aggregate of experiences with an implied acceptance that the proposed outcome is desirable; for example not getting eaten by a tiger. Those that got eaten no longer exist to express their opinion - which got them eaten.

This describes intelligence as a classification of behavior, a definition that gives some support for the Intelligent Design theory camp, but not in the manner they usually attempt to convey.